


Merrily We Fall

by ohhotlamb



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Best Friends, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 09:10:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4954624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohhotlamb/pseuds/ohhotlamb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco had had a crumb on his lip. Yeah, yeah—that was it. Marco was sleeping, residual crumbly flake from a strawberry Toaster Strudel at the corner of his mouth, and Jean had been helping him by wiping it off.</p><p>And if he had chosen to wipe the crumb off with his own mouth, well, then who was to criticize his cleaning techniques?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merrily We Fall

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write SOMETHING JeanMarco for freakin' ever, cause they're tied for my ultimate OTP of all time. But I'm always scared writing characters for the first time, so it took me a while to just kind of get around to it. So here's a short little fluffy fic about Jean being lame, as per usual, and Marco being sleepy and giving him the push he needs. 
> 
> the title is lyrics from ["I Wouldn't Mind"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qea3lLr5qQ)  
> by He is We! which is super adorable and fluffy!  
> talk to me on my tumblr [here](http://smileyeeyore.tumblr.com/)! I love talking to people!!!

Marco had had a crumb on his lip. Yeah, yeah—that was it. Marco was sleeping, residual crumbly flake from a strawberry Toaster Strudel at the corner of his mouth, and Jean had been helping him by wiping it off. Who knows what could have happened otherwise? What if the crumb had attracted _ants?_ Marco probably would not have appreciated waking up to a face-full of ants. Really, Jean had been doing him a goddamn _favor._

And if he had chosen to wipe the crumb off with his own mouth, well, then who was to criticize his cleaning techniques? Toaster Strudel weren’t cheap breakfast pastries! He had gotten _at least_ one-fifth of a whole calorie out of his thrifty-ness. It was being resourceful, that’s what it was.

And while he had come up with this sound logic to convince _himself_ of what he was doing, Jean just hadn’t counted on pulling away from the measly kiss (if you could even _call_ it that, because it’s not like he had done it for a stupid reason like having a _crush,_ or because Marco looked cute as all hell when he was asleep—or just cute in general, really—) only to find himself face-to-face with narrowed chocolate brown eyes meeting his own.  

That’s when Jean came to the late realization that his pathetic reasoning was completely lacking all rational sense.

And that he was utterly _fucked_.

Marco stares up at him, eyes squinty and chin dimpled with a frown only in the way it does when he first wakes up. “What do you think you’re doing?” he croaks, blinking slowly. He licks his lips—his tongue lingers in the corner of his mouth, where it still must be a little sweet from the crumb that was no longer there, but instead floating somewhere along Jean’s digestive system. Because he may or may not have licked it off Marco’s face.

(But it’s not like there was any _evidence,_ and who’s to say that Marco hadn’t dreamed the whole thing up? The human brain was weird—and Marco himself had confessed to once having a dream about being pregnant with a fucking _basketball_. In comparison, Jean licking something off his face was completely normal!)

But the situation is, to put it mildly, panic-inducing. Jean’s heart is being a mile a minute, his skin growing hot and tingly with devastating embarrassment. _What are you talking about? You’re still half-asleep, Marco. Go back to bed._ That is what he _should_ say. That is what _should_ be at the tip of his tongue. But all his higher brain function seems to be momentarily taking a vacation, because instead he completely foregoes his best possible option of getting out of this unscathed.

“I fell,” he replies lamely.

He wants to _die._

Marco, half-asleep that he is, is still sharp enough to process the bullshit that just spewed from Jean’s mouth. His frown deepens, one dark eyebrow arching in the perfect picture of skepticism. “You _fell_ ," he repeats slowly. "Onto _my_ bed. In _my_ room. On _my_ face. With _your_ face.”

Okay, well, when he says it like _that,_ it was even less believable than Jean previously thought. He scrambles, eyes wildly darting around the room in a frenzy in search of anything— _anything_ that could help claw himself out of the hole he so nicely dug for himself. There’s not much to work with—it was just so _messy,_ dirty laundry exploded everywhere, water bottles and fruit snack wrappers among loose lecture notes. Jean’s eyes catch sight of the closet (stuffed so full of clothes and crap that it looked like it belonged in the room of a cartoon character with a hoarding problem) and he takes hold of the first train of thought that shoots past his consciousness. He starts running with it.

“I came in to borrow your red flannel and I tripped on your stupid guitar case. Not my fault you leave your shit everywhere!” Jean huffs, his face burning too much for it to sound as indignant as he was aiming for. Marco just looks up at him, his face looking oddly bare without the near-permanent smile (Marco was not a morning person, nor was he a mid-afternoon-post-nap person). He then blinks, and his eyes don’t re-open.

“Oh, Jean,” he sighs with disappointment, and Jean cringes, because he was honestly pretty disappointed with himself, too. Marco worms around a little in his nest of blankets. “Next time you fall, try it with a little bit more enthusiasm, ‘kay? Could barely feel anythin’,” he grumbles, reaching down himself blindly to grip the edge of his comforter and haul it back up underneath his chin.  

Well, now _that_ was interesting information.

Jean stares at Marco’s still form incredulously, mouth hanging open and making his already-long face even longer. Did he just hear what he _thought_ he just heard? The small, inextinguishable first spark of hope ignites in his belly when he sees the light flush on Marco's cheeks that definitely wasn't there a moment ago. His jaw snaps shut with an audible _click,_ and he shifts—more comfortably seated on the edge of Marco’s bed, his eyes fall from Marco’s face (beautiful, perfect, more lovely than anything in the world—) to the comforter, eyes tracing the shapes of stormtroopers surrounded by clusters of R2-D2’s and starships. He wets his lips nervously. “Uh. So, if I were to hypothetically fall again? Would you hypothetically fall upwards? On purpose?”

“Fall upwards?” Marco parrots quietly, a smidge of his usual grin ghosting across his lips.

“Would you?” Jean demands, sacrificing all semblance of his previously laid-back attitude, because dammit, he needs to _know!_

Marco’s lips pull back even more to reveal a row of pretty white teeth. “In this purely hypothetical scenario, would you still be pretending that you tripped over my guitar case, which is currently in the trunk of my car?”

Oh, that’s _right._ Marco had had his band practice this morning, and being the slob that he is, he usually just left it in the car until he had need for it again. Jean can’t believe he forgot something so _obvious—_ now that he knows his lie was woefully transparent, there’s no other choice but to just roll with it. He might as well see this through to the end _—_ but what the end happened to entail, Jean had no idea. All he could do was hope for the best. 

Which was starting to look more and more like an actual possibility. 

He nods slowly. “I might be willing to renegotiate the terms of my tripping.”

Marco laughs, and when his eyes open they open fully, the edges crinkling with his grin. He sits up, scooting back to give Jean more space, and his legs spread a little under his blankets. He leans back on his hands, smile bright and mischievous. “Negotiate what, my good sir? I am very clearly winning this argument—I don’t think I’m up for negotiations.”

Jean hums. “Okay, fine, fine," he allows. "You drive a hard bargain, Bodt—we don’t have to renegotiate the falling scenario. But how to do you feel about this? In this different scenario, you have a Toaster Strudel crumb on your mouth and, being the Good Samaritan I am, decide to help you out, friend to friend.”

Marco nods thoughtfully. “Hmmm, I see. And you wouldn’t happen to have any ulterior motives either, would you?”

“None whatsoever.”

“I didn’t think you would. Now, Jean, listen to _my_ scenario—ready?” he asks, and when Jean nods, he throws the blankets off his legs, inching forward until his knee is pressed into Jean’s thigh. He leans forward, grinning. “Picture this: there is no guitar case. My mouth is crumb-free. You’re sitting on the edge of my bed, and I just woke up from a nap. My hair is adorably tousled. Your face is beet-red and it’s really cute. What do you do?”

Jean breathes out heavily, and he subtly pinches his own ass on the side that Marco can’t see, because there was no way he was going to be dreaming this only to wake up to a cold reality where Marco doesn’t _flirt_ with him (or maybe it's always been happening, but he just didn't have the hope in him that now lets him see it for how it really is). The pinch stings, and the Marco smiling with a touch of shyness in front of him doesn’t disappear. “I think I would completely on-purpose kiss you,” he rushes to say, his ears burning and heart leaping in his throat because how long has he wanted this? How many years has he been so head-over-heels? How long has Marco _felt the same way?_  

“Is that your final answer?” Marco murmurs, biting into his bottom lip to keep from laughing, his cheeks blooming with color.

“It is,” Jean confirms, light-headed and still not altogether sure he’s not hallucinating.

“ _Ding ding ding_ , and we have a winner,” Marco sing-songs in his best impersonation of a carny. His eyes drop down to stare at Jean’s mouth, and he licks his lips again, slow and deliberate.

Jean’s hands twitch. “What’s my prize?” he asks, breathless, and he dully notes that somewhere along the line he’d twisted his body to face Marco completely, and now both Marco’s knees are almost in his lap, their faces so close together they breathe the same air.

“You tell me,” Marco says, his head tilting—and damn, he was _right,_ his hair _is_ adorably messed up from his nap, curled around his ears and sticking up at the top—Jean unconsciously reaches out to touch it, smooths it down with his fingers and pushes strands out of his face, tucks them behind Marco’s ears. He leaves his hand on Marco’s cheek, warm and soft and freckled. Marco leans into his hand, humming in a way that doesn’t sound like a conscious noise, more like the way a cat would purr just because it can’t hold in its contentment any longer.

Jean looks at Marco—looks at his bright, alert eyes, down to his freckled cheeks and finally to his mouth. He thinks of every time he’s dreamed of this moment—every time Marco’s hugged him, touched him, brushed his fingers across Jean’s shoulder. Board game nights, quietly reading together in the warm, sunny nook between their bedrooms; innumerable smiles and laughs and _Jean’s,_ with tones varying from exasperation to unbearable fondness.

He leans across the small space between them, and without any additional excuse for himself he kisses Marco, soft but sure, so this time they can _feel_ it.

 _This_ was definitely the best possible scenario.


End file.
